Sermon: “Renew Your Strength”

The healing of Peter’s mother-in-law is one of my favorite Bible stories.  I don’t know what it is exactly – just to think that that “rock” on which Jesus founded his Church, the great St. Peter, had a mother-in-law connects him to my life.  It gets him off of that fluffy cloud where he stands checking his list at the Pearly Gates, with that … look … you know, like a maître d’ raising an eyebrow at an unfortunate choice of shoes.  Instead we can see him glancing up from the Book of Life, that record of all our earthly deeds, and giving us a nice, grandfatherly smile.  “I see here you had a mother-in-law, and… hmm… she died of natural causes.  Well done.  Enter your heavenly reward, good and faithful servant!” But what I really like best about this story is what it can teach us about how we ourselves might find healing in the Good News of Jesus Christ.  We can learn more about what the prophet Isaiah meant when he said “those that wait for the Lord shall renew their strength.” What might that really mean for us?

As you may remember, Mark’s Gospel begins with the hellfire-and-brimstone preaching of John the Baptist, who quoted Isaiah.  Then, after Jesus is baptized by John in the Jordan River, he runs off with other bug-eating disciples to live with the wild beasts in the wilderness for 40 days.  Then when John goes and gets himself arrested, Jesus shows up in Galilee and talks Peter and his brother right off their fishing boat to go gallivanting down the road searching for new recruits.  It’s not hard to imagine how that idea would have sounded to Peter’s wife and her mother!  Here Peter had this safe, secure job and a good life, probably with a houseful of kids to support, and he drops it all to run off after a crazy Zealot – probably to get himself arrested, or killed.  Through the stained glass of our Bible-hindsight, the disciples deciding to follow Jesus looks like a great idea; but to Peter’s family, it must have seemed like insanity.  Every Roman road back then was lined with crosses, many of them filled with decent family men and their teenage sons, who were routinely crucified for much less than listening to insurgents who preached against the Empire. 

And the first thing Jesus does -- in the verses that come just before today's lesson -- is to make a big scene at the synagogue right there in town, casting a demon out of a shouting crazy man.  He doesn’t even bother to keep a low profile.  And after that, he shows up at Peter’s house.  Remember?  “²⁹As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John,” but Peter’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever.  Her daughter’s husband first ran off with a troublemaker and then came back with the whole gang for dinner!  We can see why anyone in that situation might have gone to bed with a sick headache.  I think I’d need to cool off by myself for a while– let them heat up their own blinking leftovers! 

We forget that although beliefs and customs do change over time, human nature stays a lot the same.  People have always been wary of new ideas.  Older folks like me have always looked at the energy and idealism of young guys like Jesus and Peter with a certain amount of skepticism.  Occupied nations have always been divided between brave resistance fighters and those who get beaten down, and become cynical or discouraged by their oppression.  Watch Casablanca again, as John and I did last night, if you need a reminder.  But everyone is hungry for a healing word of hope – the angry, the cynical, and the depressed.  The Good News is, for those of us who need healing, those of us like Peter’s mother-in-law, the Lord is strong enough to lift us up.  Do you have emotions that oppress you?  What are the problems that bind you?  What are the burdens that weigh you down?  We need to let the Lord come close enough to take us by the hand and renew our strength. 

The Good News of our faith – repeated here in both Isaiah and Mark – is that the Holy Spirit has the power to lift us up on wings like eagles.  Jesus came to save us, to be the one who sets the captives free, as Isaiah says.  But how exactly does that happen?  What can we learn about our own healing from the story of Peter’s mother-in-law?  What does she do, or NOT do, to make healing possible?  And what does Jesus do, or say, when he lifts her up?  The whole story is told in just two short verses: “³⁰Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. ³¹He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.”  What clues are there in the story about how this happened exactly?

First of all – and this is more important than you may think – Peter’s mother-in-law goes to bed with her fever.  You can probably tell I got another bad cold on my airplane flight to North Carolina last Sunday.  So I got this sermon written not just with the help of the Lord, as I do each week as I pray and study the Bible, but with the help of drugs!  Today we are much more inclined to take a pill and tough it out at work than we are to seek healing in more old-fashioned ways like rest and prayer.  The busy pace of our lives discourages us from taking sick days, much less from really observing regular Sabbath time, as the Bible commands us to do.  And yet, we see in the verses right after the healing, Jesus does not hesitate to retreat from the world and to pray when he gets burned out. We heard how “³²That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. ³³And the whole city was gathered around the door. ³⁴And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons….”

Did you catch that?  “The whole city was gathered around,” and yet “he cured many who were sick … and cast out many demons.”  He didn’t do it all.  He left the house when they were still lined up around the block.  Jesus must have been exhausted by the demands the world was putting on him.  So what did he do?  “³⁵In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.”  And the disciples had to go off and look for him!  What does it say? “³⁶And Simon and his companions hunted for him. ³⁷When they found him, they said to him, ‘Everyone is searching for you.’”  Yes, in Bible-speak we hear, in an English accent (why is it always in an English accent?), “Lord, do come, for everyone is searching for you.”  Do you think that’s what they said?  NO!  They’d been out looking for the man all night – the house was surrounded by crowds of sick and crazy people. They said, “Lord, where have you been??? Everyone is searching for you!!!”  But Jesus was wise enough to take the time he needed to rest and to let the Lord renew his strength.

The second thing that happens in this story is that the community that surrounded Peter’s mother-in-law told the Lord about her need for healing.  Those first disciples had the convenience of just walking into the next room to get Jesus, but today we call on him in prayer.  So many of you have told me how much you’ve appreciated the prayer ministries of our church – you’ve put the name of someone in your own circle of friends and family on our prayer list, maybe even your own name.  Asking for help, as people in any 12-step recovery group will tell you, is the first step on the road to healing.  Like baby birds who cry out when they get too tired to keep flying – knowing that the mother eagle will come to help them and create enough updraft to give them a little rest – the Lord can be the wind beneath our wings too.  But aside from the mystical power of the Holy Spirit, there is very tangible assistance available from the church – as our faith community longs to live its call as the risen Christ, the hands and heart of Jesus reaching out to the world.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t occur to some of us to cry out for help when we’re on a downward spiral.  I know it can be discouraging to our Stephen Ministers that so few of us take advantage of the helpful listening and comfort care they have to offer.  As the disciples did for Peter’s mother-in-law, friends sometimes need to help friends. 

And finally, the third thing this story teaches is that healing comes from the power of the Lord, not from our own strength.  No force on earth can do what the amazing grace of Christ can do for a fevered and sickened soul.  Peter’s mother-in-law doesn’t heal herself.  She doesn’t just smile and try to fake it.  She doesn’t rise from her bed through sheer force of her own will.  It is the Lord who does the heavy lifting.  What did Jesus whisper in her ear to soothe her fevered spirit and inspire her to get up and play the role she was called to play in salvation history?  My guess is it was the same word of love that Jesus heard from God on the day of his own baptism – that precious Gospel that washes all our sins away – “You are my beloved child.  In you I am well-pleased.”

The love of Christ is real and it does heal.  When we take the time to rest in God’s presence, to cry out for help, and to take Jesus’s hand and come to his table of grace – we will be healed. 

Thanks be to God for this Good News.  Amen.